The present invention relates generally to the field of information retrieval, and more particularly to improving metasearch results.
Information retrieval is the task of obtaining information relevant to an information need from a collection of information. An information retrieval process begins when a user submits a statement of information need (search query) into an information retrieval system. For example, a user may submit a question into a web search engine to obtain information from the World Wide Web that answers the question. Typically, a search engine identifies several items of information from a collection of information as matches to a search query, as opposed to uniquely identifying a single matching item. Information retrieval systems typically determine a numeric score for each identified item based on how well each item matches the query and rank the items according to the score.
A metasearch engine is a search engine that utilizes the information of one or more other search engines to produce results to a search query. Metasearch engines receive a search query from a user, send out the search query to third party search engines, and merge the results into a single set to be provided to the user. By combining multiple results from different search engines, a metasearch efficiently provides more accurate results since less effort is required to access more information.